Will diplomats gathering in New York face up to the catastrophe in Iraq that through positive support or inaction they helped to create, asks Curtis Doebbler* One might expect a nation that attacks another population with more violence than perhaps ever has been unleashed on anyone to do everything it can to justify its actions. Instead, the administration of US President George W Bush has done everything in its power to ensure that Americans and the world do not see the reality of the humanitarian catastrophe that is Iraq today. Not only did a US general and US ambassador mislead Congress by claiming that progress has been made in Iraq, but now the Bush administration is after those who called these liars, well, "liars". When Moveon.org ran a prominent advertisement pointing out how General Petraeus had misled Congress about progress being made in Iraq, the Bush administration urged its congressional allies to attack the ad, claiming it insulted Petraeus. In their defence, Moveon.org claimed that the Bush administration was insulting the US military and the US people by continuing to send American soldiers to be killed in Iraq and whitewashing the truth about how badly the war is going. Moveon.org entitled its ad "General Petraeus or General Betray Us", focussing on the damage being done to America and American soldiers who are being forced to fight in an illegal war. No one mentioned the humanitarian disaster besetting the Iraqi people. The administration's position is not surprising to those who have observed the US government's "war on terror" and anything else it does not like. These "wars" do not focus on victims. Even the families of 9/11 victims did not benefit from America's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. In some cases, they lost more family members in these crazed attempts by the American president to "look strong" in the face of events that showed how impotent the world's superpower could be. Some 9/11 families are still fighting the US government to get answers more than six years later. Clearly, victims did not count. When Americans and the world responded to American aggression around the globe by voicing dissent, the Bush administration did not apologise -- not even to its allies -- and/or change its ways. Instead, it sought to change how others perceive its chosen path of violence. It created a czar of propaganda, Karen Hughes, to "reach out" to those "stupid people" -- who inconveniently seemed to be the overwhelming majority of the earth's inhabitants -- who criticised America. Victims of American aggression were to be pacified by stories about how "good" and "understanding" America really was, while all the time America continued to attack Afghani and Iraqi children by war, exploitation, and other forms of violence. An American or anyone subjected to how the American media has portrayed the situation in Iraq -- even media that opposes the war -- would think that the real victims of the Iraq war are American soldiers, American generals, American politicians, and Americans in general, not Iraqis, if they only listen to US propaganda. Such thinking is perverse. Such thinking insults the memory of every Iraqi who has lost his life. It desecrates the graves of Iraqi children whose futures have been destroyed. It spits in the face of Iraqis who have survived, but who are struggling to regain their country from a foreign and oppressive occupier that has established a brutal government of American puppets to justify its violence against the Iraqi people. Such thinking also ignores the facts. One of the main facts being ignored is that America's aggression against Iraq has killed at least 1,000,000 Iraqis, according to the best estimates. This figure is based on two studies done by world- renowned researchers from two American universities and one Iraqi university. The studies show that if the war had been avoided, more than one million Iraqi victims would have been alive today. These victims are Iraqis, not Americans, so they don't count according to the Bush administration that infamously announced that it does not count civilians killed in Iraq. The UN's World Food Programme reported in May 2006 that four million Iraqis are "food- insecure and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance." The UN's refugee programme estimates that 70 per cent of Iraqis do not have access to safe drinking water. These numbers have undoubtedly increased as little progress is being made in stabilising the country and the humanitarian toll continues to mount. The Iraqi government installed by the US -- which has been found to be one of the most inept and corrupt in the world -- is doing little to abate this suffering. It would appear that even to the current Iraqi government, Iraqis do not count. When private American contractor Blackwater recently appeared to have slaughtered Iraqi civilians in support of US aggression against the Iraqi people, Iraqi authorities did speak out strongly for a few hours. This was quickly stifled, however, and the authorities pulled back into the stall of their puppet-masters. The result was an agreement to jointly investigate the killings with US authorities. The US government can control this type of investigation as it controlled the unfair and illegal trial of the former Iraqi president. Once again the puppet government proved its allegiance to the US, not to the Iraqi people. Perhaps the most important indicators of the well being of a nation's people are healthcare and education. In Iraq, both were priorities of the government led by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Today they have been devastated and are dysfunctional. A July 2007 Oxfam report found that Iraqi healthcare facilities are "overstretched by the increasing number of victims of the ongoing violence and of the related extreme deprivation" and that "health services are generally in a catastrophic situation in the capital, in the main towns, and across the governorates." As a result of the failed national health system, as well as food and water insecurity, an estimated 20 million Iraqis are threatened by transferable diseases and almost four million are threatened by starvation, according to UN or other official reports. According to Oxfam, Iraq's educational system is in turmoil due to continuing insecurity and the destruction of infrastructure. The B Russell s Tribunal, a prominent anti-war group, has documented the assassination of over 330 prominent Iraqi academics and many more who are threatened. There are also countless thousands of teachers who have fled Iraq. Health and education in Iraq are worse now than in any time in recent memory. One would think that the devastation of health and education would be of concern to the people who invaded Iraq allegedly to save it. But perhaps former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan best expresses reality when he said that the war was about oil. This statement implies that what happened to the Iraqi people themselves was and remains largely irrelevant to the US government. If little is said about Iraqis suffering in Iraq, even less has been said about the estimated three million Iraqis who have fled the country, or the two to four million who are displaced inside Iraq. These Iraqis are often suffering the most and their suffering continues to increase so long as the US and its allies occupy Iraq. Certainly their best interests are not in minds of US officials and Iraqi authorities that are calling for a continuation of foreign troop presence in Iraq. While the Iraqi people have remained irrelevant to America and the American media, what has befallen the Iraqi people was not a surprise. The United States and all diplomats who cared at the UN in New York or Geneva knew very well the humanitarian catastrophe that would follow a US-led invasion of Iraq. On International Human Rights Day, 10 December 2002, months before the March 2003 attack on the Iraqi people, a UN Report stated unambiguously that if war broke out "the resultant devastation would undoubtedly be great." At least two other UN reports and several NGO reports documented the expected devastation of yet another war against the Iraqi people with startling accuracy. These reports estimated the number of dead, predicted food insecurity, health and education deprivation, and displacement with graphic clarity. None of these warnings seemed to matter to the US government, the UK government, or their allies. Nor did the warnings appear to matter to the international community that cowardly remained tight-lipped instead of supporting the rule of law over an aggression that violated international law perhaps more clearly than any other armed attack since the adoption of the UN Charter. Instead of focusing on the humanitarian plight of the Iraqi people, Americans and others were selfishly focusing on themselves. The mantra "Me first" is being taken to obscene levels. At the recent US congressional hearings on Iraq, the truth about the humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq was not exposed. It is now the turn of the foreign ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement and the new 62nd UN General Assembly -- whose current president, Srgjan Kerim, supported the aggression against the Iraqi people in 2003 as Macedonia's ambassador to the UN -- to take the opportunity, if not indeed to rise to the duty, of recognising the reality of the humanitarian catastrophe they participated in against the Iraqi people by their actions or their inaction. Iraq has become a catastrophe too horrid to ignore. The primary question that these bodies must ask themselves is: Can our humanity allow us to sit silently without taking action to end the suffering of the Iraqi people and to punish those responsible? * The writer is an international human rights lawyer and co-author, with former US Attorney- General Ramsey Clark, of The Humanitarian Tragedy in Iraq: Recognising Reality .
